Youth
Sears was born near Brockway Township, St. Clair County, Michigan. Her father, Justin Lewis Paldi, ran a farm more than twenty miles from the closest railroad station. By age 12, she worked for L.A. Sherman, a wealthy man in Brockway. He owned a general store where she became a salesgirl. Her father moved his family to Port Huron.
She found employment for a time as check girl before advancing to cashier and general clerk. The job was obtained by capturing a $10 prize on the stock contained in the store. Winning gave her the privilege of working for $3 a week. Sears was eventually hired to contribute pieces to the town's newspaper by the managing editor. Dissatisfied that Port Huron was too small, she left after five years, aged seventeen. She journeyed first to Detroit and then ventured to Chicago.
Read more about this topic: Zelda Sears
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
““You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death:
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”
“I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied;
“Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remembered my God,
And He hath not forgotten my age.””
—Robert Southey (1774–1843)
“... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)